Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Though the six world powers and Iran couldn’t clinch a final comprehensive agreement for the second time, there is still hope for resolving the long-lasting dispute over Islamic Republic's nuclear energy program as the sides agreed to extend the nuclear talks for seven consecutive months.

After a nearly week of intensive talks in Vienna, the P5+1 and Iran have ended talks with the two sides agreeing to extend the Joint Plan of Action till July 1, 2015.

The extension of the nuclear talks showed that both sides are willing to overcome the differences between them. The diplomats from both sides are hopeful to reach the final deal in less than seven months.

While some experts deemed the talks as failed, others considered that it’s too early to talks about failure.

Commenting on the issue, James M. Dorsey, Senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies told AzerNews that a failure means there would be no agreement to resolve the nuclear issue and no agreement to extend the talks.

“Beyond the differences over remaining issues, both the United States and Iran need to project a sense of tough and difficult negotiations to counter critics, both domestic and regional, of any agreement that might be achieved,” Dorsey said.

He believes that the chances haven’t run out for the talks and Iran and six world powers are willing to come to an agreement.

“In principle, both the permanent members of the United Nations security Council plus Germany and Iran want an agreement. Both need at the same time to be seen as not having caved in to the other,” Dorsey said.

Speaking about the impacts of the fruitless talks on Iran, Dorsey noted that it will certainly create new hardship for Tehran, which has been experiencing hard economic situation because of the international sanctions imposed on the country over its nuclear energy program.

“For Iran it would mean continuation of crippling international sanctions that severely affect its economy, continued international isolation and a weakening of the country’s more moderate forces represented by President Hassan Rouhani. It would also weaken Iran in the struggle for regional power in the Middle East,” Dorsey said.

Following the talks, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran do not intend to use the whole period of extended seven months for negotiations, but to reach a comprehensive final agreement within the shortest possible time.

“If we had a little more time, we could have finalized the job in this round of negotiations,” Majid Takht-e Ravanchi, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister said after talks.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement was also positive after the talks as he said Iran has lived up to its commitments based on the Geneva nuclear deal with the six world powers. But, in meantime, noted that the anti-Tehran sanctions will remain in place.

“Progress was indeed made on some of the most vexing challenges that we face and we now see the path toward potentially resolving some issues that had been intractable. We believe a comprehensive deal that addresses the world’s concerns is possible. It is desirable,” Kerry said.

Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, the Chief Editor of the magazine "Russia in Global Affairs" told Trend Agency that it is not a catastrophe that the sides couldn’t reach an agreement on this issue on November 24 deadline.

He added that although formally Iran holds negotiations with P5+1 (the US, UK, Russia, France, China plus Germany), in fact these are talks between Iran and the U.S. “The rest of the participants will not be able to do anything unless Iran and the U.S. reach a basic understanding and mutual trust.”

Lukyanov believes that rapprochement between Iran and the U.S. is a very difficult process and the main issue here is the perception of each other.

“Iran wants to negotiate with the West, however, Tehran wonders what Washington can actually do. Even if Barack Obama signs any agreement, it remains to be seen if he could implement it against the totally hostile Congress and anti-Iranian sentiment in general in the American establishment?” Lukyanov said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Congressmen called for the imposition of additional sanctions against Iran during the course of negotiations. Three influential Republican senators said the extension should be coupled with increasing sanctions and a requirement that any final agreement be sent to Congress for approval.

However, State Secretary defended the decision not to abandon the talks. “We would be fools to walk away from a situation where the breakout time has already been expanded rather than narrowed, and where the world is safer because this program is in place,” Kerry said a press conference in Vienna after talks on November 24.

Lukyanov further went on to say that Iran, especially the Supreme Leader of the country has also no trust in the West, and the failure of the talks will only aggravate the anti-Iranian sentiment.

“Moreover, Tehran reasonably believes that today the U.S. needs Iran more rather given the situation in the Middle East, where it is more difficult for the U.S. to conduct its policy without the support of allies,” he said.

At the moment, the pace of sanctions relief and uranium enrichment volume appear to be at the core of the nuclear talks. Iran seeks to operate as many centrifuges as possible, the West – to dismantle most of them. Iran wants UN and Western sanctions lifted all at once, the West – step by step to ensure Iranian compliance with the deal.

In November 2013, Iran and the P5+1 group of countries clinched an interim nuclear accord, which took effect on January 20 and expired six months later. However, they agreed to extend their talks until November 24 as they remained divided on a number of key issues.

Iran says its nuclear program is for energy and medical purposes and rejects allegations that its nuclear work is a cover to build atomic weapons.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Qatar is signalling rejection of demands by human rights and
trade union activists to grant trade union and collective bargaining rights to
its majority migrant worker population with the detention and likely
deportation of more than 100 predominantly South Asian labourers who went on
strike to protest low pay as well as poor working and living conditions.

Doha News reported that the workers, among the lowest paid
in the wealthy Gulf state, were arrested on the third day of their strike after
scuffles broke out with police. Those detained were among some 800 striking
workers primarily employed by two companies. Qatar Freelance Trading &
Contracting and Qatar Middle East Co.

Online business directories describe Qatar Freelance Trading
& Contracting as a manpower supplier or recruitment agency. A Qatar
Foundation study designed to set out ethical standards for the recruitment of
foreign labour earlier this year defined manpower suppliers as “agencies that
recruit and ‘warehouse’ migrant labour, hiring (or leasing) them out to
companies and other organizations on short-term or seasonal bases.”

Quoting anonymous executives of unidentified agencies, the
report suggested that workers employed by these agencies were forced to pay for
the cost of their recruitment in violation of what the Foundation defined as
ethical recruitment principles that seek to ensure workers’ rights and shield
them from exploitation. The 162-page report said it was able to identify only
two agencies that it would define as ethical recruiters.

Striking workers told Doha News that they were paid less
than the legal minimum wage in Nepal and were refused compensation if they fell
ill. The workers charged that once in Qatar they had been forced to replace
contracts they had signed before their departure with blank agreements which
meant they were being paid less than had been originally agreed and enjoyed
fewer benefits such as a food allowance.

A Nepalese news website said that Qatari officials and
Nepalese diplomats had visited the workers before the strike. Those visits
appear however to have produced no improvement of their situation.

A spokesman for Qatar Freelance Trading and Contracting
denied the allegations in an interview with Doha News and said the workers were
simply trying to get higher pay. He said a number of workers had requested
repatriation.

The strike occurred as more than 90 human rights groups and
trade unions issued a statement demanding abolition of the region’s kafala or
sponsorship system that puts workers at the mercy of their employers; ratify
and implement international labour and human rights standards; and engage with
trade unions. The statement highlighted the plight of domestic workers, the
most vulnerable group of foreign labour, because they often are not included in
legal labour provisions.

Gulf states, including Qatar, are about to adopt a
standardized contract for domestic workers that would grant them the right to a
weekly day off, having their own living arrangements rather than being forced
to live with their employer, a six-hour working day with paid overtime, and the
right to travel. Trade unionists said they were reserving judgement until they
had seen a draft of the standardized contract.

Human rights activists argue that the kafala system and
costly legal options often make strikes although relatively rare in the Gulf
the only way foreign workers can get their voices heard. Qatar and the United
Arab Emirates have in the past cracked down and deported striking workers. The Qatar
labour ministry has sought to facilitate workers’ complaints by recently installing
kiosks at its branches where workers can file an electronic complaint.

Human rights and trade union activists worry however that
the government’s handling of the strike could signal a hardening of attitudes.
Qatar has been susceptible to pressure by human rights and trade union
activists ever since it four years ago won the right to host the 2022 World
Cup.

The activists had hoped that workers’ political rights such
as independent trade unions and collective bargaining would become possible as
part of a gradual reform process that would start with improved working and
living conditions. Despite engagement with the activists – in stark contrast to
attitudes in other Gulf states that bar entry and detain critics – Qatar has
yet to enact lofty promises of change.

The handling of the strike suggests not only that Qatar, a
comparatively enlightened autocracy, has no intention of political
liberalization at the end of the process, but that even those issues Qatar is
willing to discuss are at risk.

The intervention by the police effectively deprived the
workers of their last resort to voice legitimate grievances that violate
existing Qatari rules and regulations as well as Qatari promises of reform. In
the absence of an investigation of the reasons for the strike, it reduced the
police to acting as the private security arm of potentially abusive employers.

In a stark condemnation, International Trade Union
Confederation (ITUC) secretary general Sharan Burrow, one of Qatar’s most
uncompromising critics, charged that “Qatar’s brutal disregard for migrant
workers is on display once again. The ‘labour reforms’ promised by the
authorities add up to nothing, and (world soccer body) FIFA, the athletics body
IAAF, multinationals and others which are getting a free ride on the back of
modern slavery in Qatar should be ashamed to be in league with a dictatorship
like this,” Ms. Burrow said in a statement.

Ms. Burrow was referring to Qatar’s winning this month of
the right to host the 2019 world athletics championships despite the fact that
it had yet to enact serious labour reform. Human Rights Watch researcher
Nicholas McGeehan told The Guardian that “if Qatar had shown any signs of
making significant reforms to its labour system then this decision could have
represented just reward for Qatar’s progress, but as it stands it looks like
the IAAF has just given its seal of approval to Qatar’s callous indifference”
towards the rights of foreign workers.

In a bid to circumvent Qatar’s ban on trade unions, international
labour groups are exploring ways to help workers in countries like Qatar
express grievances and unionize by for example joining global organizations
such as Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI). BWI executives recently
held a series of discreet meetings with workers in Qatar.

Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet quoted Swedish Building
Workers’ Union chairman Johan Lindholm as telling South Asian workers during an
encounter in a restaurant: “There are 1.5 million of you. They need you. You
are building their nation and you will be the ones building the Football World
Cup in 2022. You should have rights!”

Workers raised the same kind of complaints during the
encounter that prompted their colleagues to go on strike, according to Svenska
Dagbladet. The newspaper said one worker pulled receipts out of his pocket to
prove that they were forced to buy food in a company canteen that was double
the price of what it would cost the workers to cook their own food.

In what appeared to suggest a growing assertiveness among
some foreign workers, the worker with the receipts told the trade unionists he
was willing risk campaigning for labour rights. “I may get in trouble, but
there are 16,000 workers in the company I work for who can have it better. I’ll
do it. I’m not afraid,” Svenska Dagbladet quoted the worker as saying.

In response, BWI secretary general Ambet Yuson suggested
that a union lawyer could take up the issue if a number of workers would sign a
complaint.

The trade union visit was part of an effort to create
informal local networks as well as a legal aid office that could help workers
seek redress for their grievances. BWI is expected to discuss allowing workers
in countries like Qatar to become members at a meeting in May.

“We want to send the international football association FIFA
a signal telling them that we will never stop working on this issue. We have
put the shovel in the sands of Qatar and we will see to that things start
happening,” Mr. Lindholm told the Swedish paper.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog
and a forthcoming book with the same title.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

A soccer brawl in Israel’s politically most loaded derby and
an alleged subsequent raid by the Israeli military on the offices the Palestine
Football Association (PFA) reflects a hardening of the Israeli-Palestinian
divide as Israel debates legislation that would emphasize the Jewish national
rather than the democratic nature of the state – a move that would effectively
deprive Israeli Palestinians of their identity as both Israelis and
Palestinians as well as of their equal rights.

The Israeli military said the incident had not been a raid.
It said a routine patrol had asked some Palestinians for their identification
cards, and when they said the cards were in Bnei Sakhnin’s offices soldiers had
entered the building to check their identities.

Statements in response to the PFA condemnation by world
soccer body FIFA president Sepp Blatter and Asian Football Confederation (AFC)
president Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa also denouncing the Israel raid
signalled that Israeli policy was likely to further isolate the Jewish state
and strengthen growing calls for disinvestment from and sanctions against
Israel. The Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign is one of the
Israel government’s greatest concerns. Messrs. Blatter and Salman's condemnation
coincided with a statement by the US State Department warning Israel that it
should “stick to its democratic principles.”

Sheikh Salman accused the Israelis of "breaking into
the PFA headquarters ... a dangerous precedent that requires the international
sporting family to stand together and support the PFA." He said the AFC
would work with FIFA to "study ways and mechanisms to put an end to the
suffering of Palestinian football, and send a tough message to the Israeli
authorities to stop its attacks on various parts of the Palestinian footballing
system."

The raid on the PFA headquarters came a day after fighting
broke out at the end of the club’s match against its arch rival Beitar
Jerusalem, the bete noire of Israeli soccer and the only Israeli team that
refuses to hire Palestinian players because of its racist fan base. Beitar
counts multiple right-wing Israeli leaders among its supports. Prime Minister
Benyamin Netanyahu’s recent attendance of a Beitar game was widely interpreted
as a possible indication that he might contemplating early elections.

The brawl erupted after Bnei Sakhnin fans in violation of
police orders smuggled Palestinian flags into the stadium and sported
kaffiyahs, the chequered Palestinian scarf. Animosity between the fan bases of
Bnei Sakhnin and Beitar runs deep. In recent months both fan groups have
emphasized rival Palestinian and Israeli claims to Jerusalem against a backdrop
of mounting tension in the city. Beitar fans sought to disrupt the match by
throwing soccer balls onto the pitch as it was being played and subsequently
ripped chairs out and destroyed bathrooms in the stadium, the only Israeli
facility to have been funded by Qatar, an Arab state that has no diplomatic
relations with Israel.

Mr. Blatter side lined in June on the eve of the Brazil
World Cup Palestinian calls for sanctions against the IFA in the wake of this
summer’s Gaza war and shielded FIFA from becoming the first international
organization to take action against Israel by establishing a committee that
would oversee efforts to address Palestinian grievances.

The Palestinians accused Israel in a 45-page report
submitted to FIFA of persistently seeking to undermine Palestinian soccer
activity and development. The committee is expected to report back to FIFA by the
end of this year. Israel has cited security concerns as the reason for
restrictions on the movement of players and officials charging that some of
them intended to "harm the state of Israel and its citizens." The
FIFA committee is unlikely to be able to report significant progress in the
current environment despite a planned meeting in Morocco between the IFA and
PFA on the side lines of the FIFA World Cup.aa

Years of failed efforts by FIFA to ease Israeli restrictions
on Palestinian soccer and establish a mechanism that would allow the
Palestinian and Israeli federations to resolve problems are likely to
strengthen the Palestinian efforts to persuade the soccer body to sanction
Israel.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog
and a forthcoming book with the same title.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Human rights groups and trade unions have stepped up
pressure on Qatar to reform its restrictive labour system and expanded their
campaign to include all six wealthy members of the Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC).

The activists hope that Qatar may move quicker on promised
reforms given that the integrity of the Gulf state’s successful 2022 World Cup
bid has again been called into question as a result of world soccer body FIFA’s
four-year long corruption scandal.

They also hope that their increased pressure will benefit
from the fact that multiple conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa may
make other Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates more
sensitive to criticism.

Virtually all members of the GCC -- Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Oman -- have begun to tinker with
the their labour laws and regulations as a result of the pressure on Qatar as
well as publicity surrounding multiple cases of abuse of workers, including
rape and beatings of domestic help. At the same time, they have stepped up
crackdowns on domestic critics.

The UAE in response to criticism by human rights groups and
trade unions has invested heavily in projecting itself as a forward looking,
modern state and key US ally, America’s Little Sparta in the Middle East and
North Africa, in the words of Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

In a throwback to the days after the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks
on New York and Washington, Saudi Arabia is fending off charges that its
investment of billions of dollars in the last three decades in the global
spread of Wahhabism, the kingdom’s puritan, inward-looking interpretation of
Islam, is an important ideological and theological inspiration for jihadist
groups like Islamic State, the group that controls a swath of Syria and Iraq.

In a statement as GCC labour ministers were meeting in
Kuwait, 93 human rights groups and trade unions demanded the abolition of the
region’s kafala or sponsorship system that puts workers at the mercy of their
employers; ratify and implement international labour and human rights
standards; and engage with trade unions. The statement highlighted the plight
of domestic workers, the most vulnerable group of foreign labour, because they
often are not included in legal labour provisions.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) charged
in a report published this weekend that GCC governments rather than amending
laws and regulations have sought to confront the issue by agreeing on
regionally standardized employment contracts that in the unions’ view “revealed
serious defects.” The ITUC said the Gulf states lacked the political will to
enact meaningful reform.

The activists’ stepped-up pressure is likely to be the
heaviest on Qatar, the only GCC member that since its winning of its World Cup
bid almost four years ago, has engaged with its critics. Unlike other Gulf
states that bar entry to foreign activists and incarcerate their critics, Qatar
has worked with the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to
develop new standards. It has allowed them to investigate the conditions of
foreign workers who constitute a majority of the population in several Gulf
states and issue condemnatory reports at news conferences in Doha.

The statement, issued in advance of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, a
collaborative multilateral governmental effort to improve labour mobility in
Asia, signals mounting exasperation among activists with Qatar’s failure to put
its money where its mouth is. Two major Qatari institutions, the Qatar
Foundation and the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy of the
World Cup, have adopted in cooperation with human rights groups significantly
improved labour standards. Qatar has however yet to adopt those standards
nationally and ensure their implementation. The standards moreover fall far
short of an abolition of kafala that among other things restricts a foreign
worker’s ability to freely travel or seek alternative employment.

The reference in the statement to increased engagement with trade
unions further underlines growing impatience among activists. In contrast to
Qatar’s engagement with human rights group, its relationship with the ITUC has
been troubled because of the group’s more aggressive approach which amounted to
a good cop-bad cop division of labour among activists. Human rights activists
have conceded in the past that labour reform constitutes an existential issue
for Qatar, a country in which the citizenry accounts for a mere 12 percent of
the population and that the Gulf state as a result would need time to act. The
call for increased engagement implies however a growing sense among activists
four years after Qatar won its World Cup hosting rights that the good cop-bad
cop strategy has failed to produce results.

The activists’ expanded focus was evident in a series of
recent reports on various Gulf states. It comes amid the inclusion of human and
labour rights in contracts issued by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
to future hosts of the Olympic Games and acknowledgement by FIFA that those
rights should be part of its hosting criteria. Human rights groups and others
like Transparency International are putting sports high on their agendas. Qatar
and the UAE both have ambitions to host an Olympic Games.

The IOC’s focus on human rights puts Qatar because of the World
Cup in the firing line and could have a fallout for Bahrain and the Asian
Football Confederation (AFC) that is headed by a member of the Bahraini ruling
family as a result of allegations that senior Bahraini sports officials have
been involved in the repression of athletes who allegedly participated in
anti-government protests in recent years. Restriction of women’s sporting
rights has also positioned Saudi Arabia and Iran, the GCC’s nemesis in the
struggle for regional power, centre stage in the efforts of international
sports associations to achieve some modicum of adherence to human rights.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have both in the last month
targeted the UAE, already under fire for the conditions of foreign workers
constructing facilities in Abu Dhabi for the Guggenheim Museum and New York
University and in advance of Dubai’s hosting of the 2020 Expo. A Human Rights
Watch report in late October focusing on conditions of domestic workers said
the situation in the UAE was symptomatic for the region.

The UAE’s sponsorship system "chains domestic workers
to their employers and then leaves them isolated and at risk of abuse behind
the closed doors of private homes. With no labour law protections for domestic
workers, employers can, and many do, overwork, underpay, and abuse these
women,” said Rothna Begum, the group’s researcher. Rather than engaging, the
UAE, Human Rights Watch said, reacted with “the usual complacency,” It accused
the group of "sensationalist reporting."

Amnesty, in a report entitled ‘There is no freedom here,
Silencing dissent in the United Arab Emirates (UAE),’ charged last week that
beneath “the glitz, the gloss and the glamour of the façade that the UAE’s
rulers present to the world there is a much uglier reality where activists who
dare to challenge the authorities or speak out in favour of greater democracy and
government accountability are thrown into jail. There, they are cut off from
the outside world for months at a time before they are tried and sentenced to
long prison terms by courts that do little more than rubber stamp the decisions
of the UAE executive.”

Far-reaching changes in its labour regim in response to the
stepped up pressure could make Qatar a driver of change in a region that leaves
no stone unturned in its effort to maintain the status quo and ring fence
itself against the Middle East and North Africa’s clamour for change.

Qatar is because of the World Cup the Gulf state and
multi-facetted soft power strategy most vulnerable to external pressure.
Reforms it enacts will inevitably ripple throughout the Gulf. As a result,
Qatar, already at odds with Saudi Arabia and the UAE because of its support for
Islamists including the Muslim Brotherhood, could despite being an autocracy
emerge in more than one way as a reluctant and perhaps unwitting catalyst of
rather than a bulwark against some degree of change.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog
and a forthcoming book with the same title.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Wealthy Gulf states have invited Jordan and Morocco to compete
in future Gulf Cups as part of a bid to strengthen their fragile six-nation
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at a time that they have at best papered over
deep rifts within the group.

The invitation follows an earlier stalled attempt to
persuade Jordan and Morocco, the Arab world’s only two non-Gulf monarchies, to
join the GCC, which groups Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates, Bahrain and Oman. The GCC had hoped that inclusion of Jordan and
Kuwait would help stymie calls for change and fortify Arab monarchies against
popular revolts. Jordanians already populate the rank and file of the military
and security forces in some of the smaller Gulf states.

The GCC’s soccer diplomacy came as an extraordinary GCC
summit in Riyadh earlier this week paved the way for the return of the
ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE to Doha in advance of the
group’s annual summit in Doha in early December. Saudi Arabia and its closest GCC
allies had withdrawn their ambassadors in protest against Qatari support for
the Muslim Brotherhood which they asserted involved alleged Qatari interference
in the three countries’ domestic affairs.

Yet, even soccer is not exempt from differences among Gulf
states. Former Bahrain Football Association president, Sheikh Isa bin Rashid Al
Khalifa, a member of the island’s minority Sunni Muslim ruling family, said he
was opposed to including Jordan in Morocco in the Gulf Cup. Sheikh Isa said the
bi-annual Gulf Cup should remain a Gulf affair to ensure that others did not
demand also demand the right to compete in the tournament.

The Riyadh agreement to return the ambassadors formally put
an end to the worst rift among Gulf states since the founding of the GCC some
33 years ago. The rulers’ statement announcing the return of the ambassadors was
replete with the region’s usual rhetoric, suggesting that Qatar had made few,
if any, real concessions to cement reconciliation. Arab commentators stressed
the importance of Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani kissing Saudi
King Abdullah on the cheeks. Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, an Emirati professor, hailed
in one breath the Riyadh decision and the ongoing Gulf Cup in the Saudi capital
as a day to be proud of.

Professor Abdullah, days before the summit, however suggested
on Twitter that Qatar wasn’t buckling under. Instead, the decision to nevertheless
paper over the differences appears to be driven by concern that a further
deepening of the rift could threaten the GCC as such as well as fear of the
rise of jihadism in the form of the Islamic State, the group that has seized
control of a swath of Syria and Iraq.

To drive the point home, the UAE published on the eve of the
Riyadh summit a list of 83 groups in the Middle East, Europe and the United
States that it had banned and/or considered terrorists. The list included the
Brotherhood as well as a host of groups associated with it. The move reflected
the extent of the UAE’s opposition to political Islam that stands in stark
contrast to Qatar’s support of various Islamist groups which dates back to the late
1960s and early 1970s when Qatar became independent.

The UAE move was in line with last year’s banning of the
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and Egypt whose
military toppled the country’s first and only democratically elected president,
Mohammed Morsi, a Brother, in a military coup.

In a gesture towards its distractors, Qatar several weeks
ago asked seven leaders of the Brotherhood to leave the Gulf state. The move
was largely symbolic. The seven Brothers retained their residence permits and
some of their families remain resident in Qatar.

The outcome of the debate about the soccer invitation
extended to Jordan and Morocco will serve as one more indicator of the balance
of power in the Gulf where Saudi Arabia, the largest of the region’s states, is
widely seen as the behemoth.

The limits of Saudi regional power have however been laid
bare by various Gulf states. The return of the ambassadors to Doha without
major Qatari concessions in effect highlighted the inability of Saudi Arabia
and the UAE, which has long seen Qatar as a subversive force in the region, to
impose their will on the idiosyncratic Gulf state.

Bahrain, where Saudi troops are based since 2011 when they
helped the island state’s regime brutally suppress a popular revolt, has been
hesitant to crack down on the Brotherhood. Bahraini rulers fear that a
crackdown on the Brothers could undermine the support in its minority Sunni power
base. Oman’s close relations with Iran helped it facilitate talks to resolve
the Iranian nuclear crisis that are strongly opposed by the Saudis. Oman late
last year warned that it would resist any Saudi-backed effort to militarize
cooperation among Gulf states.

The Gulf’s soccer diplomacy ironically highlights contradictions
in Saudi and UAE efforts to ring fence the region against calls for change
sparked by the various popular Arab revolts in 2011. In contrast to Gulf
leaders, Moroccan King Mohammed VI was one of the few Arab leaders who succeeded
in taking the wind out of anti-government protests by initiating constitutional
changes that appeared to involve greater participation and transparency but
effectively did little to curtail his power.

King Mohammed did so in part by co-opting rather than excluding
the Islamists, the exact opposite of policies advocated by Saudi Arabia and the
UAE. The Moroccan government is headed by Justice and Development Party (PJD)
leader Abdelilah Benkirane, who recently recognized the limitations of his
power. “I am tired, I am starting to forget a number of things,” Mr. Benkirane
said. Earlier the prime minister described himself as an employee rather than
the leader of what he termed the king’s government.

Moroccan activists note that the king’s endorsement of an
Islamist-led government has not stopped the UAE from forging close ties to the
North African state with Mohammed declaring that he would in times of need come
to the Emirates’ assistance no matter what that would entail. The UAE moreover
has made significant investments in Morocco.

Saudi and UAE assertiveness against the Brotherhood and
other Islamists has sparked criticism not only among democracy activists,
liberals and Islamists but also within the country’s elite. Professor Abdullah,
a well-connected Emirati intellectual, appeared to question unqualified UAE
support for Egyptian general-turned-president Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the region’s
crackdown on its critics, and UAE support for the US-led military coalition
against the Islamic State in various tweets in recent weeks.

Other Emiratis suggest privately that the UAE is making
itself vulnerable as a result of its newly found assertiveness as well as it
reportedly generous financial support for an Islamist movement headed by Fethullalh
Gulen, a self-exiled Turkish imam who is locked into a bitter struggle with
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A litmus test of the degree to which Gulf leaders have truly
set aside their differences will be how many and which of the leaders attend next
month’s GCC summit in Doha as well as whether the UAE and Bahrain reverse their
decision to boycott the 2015 World Men's Handball Championship scheduled to be
hosted by Qatar in January.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog
and a forthcoming book with the same title.

Friday, November 14, 2014

A refusal by Morocco to host next month’s 2014 African Cup
of Nations soccer tournament for fear that it could import the Ebola virus from
West Africa spotlights complex relations between the continent’s Arab and
sub-Saharan nations as well as the non-transparent inner workings of the
Confederation of African Football (CAF), a constituent member of troubled world
soccer body FIFA.

The Moroccan decision to violate the terms of its agreement
to host the tournament has prompted CAF to ban it from competing in Africa’s
biggest sporting event. The Moroccan decision appears however marred in contradiction.

Morocco can’t escape the impression that it’s decision was
informed by prejudice grounded in the fact that Arabs were once among the
continent’s foremost slave traders, Morocco’s emergence as a major transit
point in efforts by sub-Saharan migrants to reach Europe, and concern about the
possible impact of an Ebola case on tourism that accounts for an estimated ten
percent of Morocco’s gross domestic product (GDP).

CAF has repeatedly declared that the World Health
Organization (WHO) had assured it that Ebola need not be a concern in deciding
on a Moroccan request to postpone until next summer the tournament that is scheduled
to be held in January.

The three countries most effected by the virus – Sierra Leone,
Liberia and Guinea – are moreover unlikely to qualify for the African Cup.
Liberia has already been disqualified, Sierra Leone is at the bottom of its
group, and Guinea has at best an outside chance being tied for third place in
its group.

Morocco’s concern about a possible spread of the violence is further
called into question by the fact that it has hosted a number of Guinean
qualifiers because they could not be played in Guinea itself.

Morocco’s justification is also complicated by the fact that
in contrast to the African Cup it has agreed to honour its commitment to next
month’s World Club Cup. The World Cup is likely to attract far more foreign
fans than the African tournament.

Morocco’s decision was likely influenced by the fact that
African tourism has already taken a substantial hit as a result of Ebola. The
Telegraph reported last month that travellers were putting off trips even to
countries like South Africa and Kenya that are far from West Africa and have
not been effected by the virus and that hotel occupancy rates in Nigeria have
dropped by half.

Arab relations with sub-Saharan Africa moreover boast a long
and complex history. “The relationship between Arabs and black Africans has
always been largely asymmetrical-with the Middle East usually the giver, and
black Africa usually the receiver. Throughout the history of their involvement
in black Africa the Arabs have been both conquerors and liberators, both
traders in slaves and purveyors of new ideas. Trade and Islam have been
companions throughout, with the crescent following the commercial caravan, the
muezzin calling believers to prayer from the marketplace,” wrote the late
controversial Kenyan scholar Ali A. Mazroui in an article in Foreign Affairs in
1975.

Professor Mazroui’s views have been challenged by black
nationalists who have denied that Arabs are part of Africa despite the fact
that Arab nations populate virtually all of the north of the continent. They
have also demanded reparations for what Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka denounced
as their “cultural and spiritual savaging of the continent” and condemned huge
purchases of African land by Gulf investors as part of a food security strategy
and investment in agro-business as a new form of colonialism.

The dark side of Arab-African relations has furthermore gained
a new lease on life with the influx of sub-Saharan immigrants into North
Africa. Moroccan Labour Minister, Abdelouahed Souhail, recently charged that
sub-Saharan immigrants were boosting his country’s unemployment rates.
Estimates for the number of sub-Saharans in Morocco range from 10-15,000, many
of whom are stranded in poverty in the country after having failed to make it
to Europe. Maroc Hebdo, a prominent Moroccan magazine, ran a cover story this
summer entitled, ‘The Black Peril.’

A Guinean student told France 24 earlier this month: “I came
here to study computing thanks to a grant from my country. I’ve been here for
four years, and for four years I’ve been a victim of racism. It happens all the
time, everywhere. The most awful incident took place at the airport. I was with
my aunt, who was heading back to Guinea and had a lot of luggage. Other
passengers from sub-Saharan countries, seeing her struggle to carry it, came to
help her get it onto the plane, but an airline employee stopped them, saying
she had to deal with it on her own because she was black. I replied in Arabic,
and he replied by hitting me in the head… Often, when I’m just walking down the
street, people will call me a ‘dirty black man’ or call me a slave.”

In response to the exacerbation of racist attitudes by Ebola
and migration as well as of at times hysterical reporting on the virus in
Moroccan and Arab media, Forum Anfa, a Moroccan NGO named after the 1943 Anfa
conference at which then Moroccan King Mohammed V gathered like-minded leaders
to coordinate their opposition to Nazi Germany, launched this month a campaign
under the slogan, “I am a Moroccan, I am an African.’

Morocco World News quoted Global Opus Prize winner and women’s
activist Aicha Ech-Chenna as saying: “It is not enough to say I am Moroccan,
I’m African. We have to accept Sub-Saharans as they are, with their religions,
Christians or Muslims…We do not need to ask them to convert or change to accept
them, we all have an African Identity”.

Defending CAF’s decision to go ahead with the African Cup in
a yet to be determined replacement for Morocco, CAF executive committee member
Constant Omari told French radio that the cost to the group and its sponsors
would be too high to justify postponing the tournament as Morocco had
requested.

Mr. Omari did not detail what the cost would be in line with
the group’s refusal to reveal its finances. Mr. Omari’s comments focused
attention on the issue at a time that world soccer governance has been rocked
by the worst crisis in its history.

With FIFA unable and unwilling to shake the shroud of
allegations of corruption and unsavoury dealings that hangs over it since 2010
and this week’s controversy over its investigation into the bids for the 2018
and 2022 World Cups that has failed to resolve the crisis, CAF like FIFA and
other regional federations will find their lack of transparency and
accountability increasingly hard to defend.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

A decision by the handball federations of Bahrain and the
United Arab Emirates to boycott the 2015 World Men's Handball Championship to
be hosted by Qatar in January signals the failure of efforts to reconcile the idiosyncratic
Gulf state with its regional detractors and casts further doubts on the
prospects of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GGC) scheduled to be held in Qatar in
December.

The boycott by Bahrain and the UAE, which together with
Saudi Arabia withdrew their ambassadors from Doha in March in protest against
Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, follows the indefinite postponement
last week of a meeting of GCC foreign ministers in Doha in preparation of the
summit. The GCC groups Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE.

Kuwaiti emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah
travelled to Doha last week for talks with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Tamim
bin Hamad Al Thani, in a failed bid to mediate between the feuding Gulf states.
Sheikh Tamim has also met several times with Saudi King Abdullah.

In a speech this week, Sheikh Tamim said he looked forward
to welcoming Gulf leaders to the Doha summit. “Regarding our foreign relations,
the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf remains the main regional
home. Supporting it and strengthening our relations with all its sisterly
countries, and deepening the bonds of fraternity among us, come at the
forefront of our foreign policy priorities,” Sheikh Tamim said.

Kuwaiti media reported that Gulf leaders may meet in advance
of the Doha summit in an effort to smooth over their differences. Saudi papers however
said that the Doha summit was likely to be moved to either Kuwait or Riyadh.

The boycott of the handball championship by the UAE and
Bahrain against the backdrop of a UAE campaign to undermine Qatar’s reputation
and credibility as well as the failure of miniscule Qatari gestures to appease
the Saudis and Emiratis suggests that positions are too entrenched for Gulf
states to achieve a compromise. Qatar moreover is likely to feel more assertive
in sticking to its guns now that an investigation by world soccer body FIFA
into its World Cup bid has concluded that there are no grounds for sanctioning
the Gulf state.

The International Handball Federation said it would discuss
the Bahraini and UAE boycott of Qatar at a meeting next week of its council in
which it could decide to sanction the two states for their boycott of Qatar. A
spokesman for the Bahrain Handball Association said 'we were told by top
officials that political tension between the two countries is the reason for
not taking part.” Bahrain, beyond its differences with Qatar over the
Brotherhood, has accused Doha of offering citizenship to Bahraini nationals.

Qatar has asked several prominent Muslim Brothers resident
in Doha to leave the country in a bid to smooth over differences with Saudi
Arabia and the UAE who are on the war path against political Islam and see
their campaign against the Brotherhood as a cornerstone of efforts to stymie
calls for change in in the Arab world. The request was not accompanied by a
cancellation of the residence permits of the seven Brothers and some of their
families remain resident in Qatar.

Ironically, Bahrain unlike Saudi Arabia, which banned the
Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, and the UAE, whose hostility to the
group is longstanding, has been reluctant to crackdown on its Brothers because
of their support for the island’s minority Sunni regime in its battle with a
restless majority Shiite population.

By contrast, Qatar’s differences with Saudi Arabia and the
UAE run deep. The refusal of Qatar, alongside Saudi Arabia the only country
that adheres to Wahhabism, the puritan version of Islam developed by the 18th
century warrior-preacher Mohammed Abdul Wahhab that dictates life in Saudi
Arabia since its creation, to bow to Saudi pressure has effectively displayed
the limitations of Saudi power. Qatar, moreover, has emerged as living proof
that Wahhabism, can be somewhat less repressive and restrictive. It is a
testimony that is by definition subversive and is likely to serve much more
than for example freewheeling Dubai as an inspiration for conservative Saudi
society that acknowledges its roots but in which various social groups are
increasingly voicing a desire for change.

The Gulf states’ failure to reign in Qatar has prompted the
UAE to step up pressure on Qatar as part of its more activist foreign policy
aimed at countering political Islam. In July, the UAE backed the establishment
of the Muslim Council of Elders (MCE) in a bid to counter the Doha-based
International Union of Muslim Scholars headed by prominent Sheikh Yusuf al
Qaradawi, widely viewed as a major spiritual influence on the Brotherhood. The
MCE promotes a Sunni Muslim tradition of obedience to the ruler rather than
activist elements of the Salafis who propagate a return to 7th century life as
it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and his immediate successors.

The UAE, despite publicly backing Qatar against calls that
it be deprived of its right to host the 2022 World Cup because of alleged
wrongdoing in its successful bid and the sub-standard working and living
conditions of foreign workers, has covertly worked against the Gulf state.
Qatar in September briefly detained two British human rights activists who were
investigating human and labour rights in the Gulf state. The detentions exposed
a network of apparently Emirati-backed human rights groups in Norway, including
the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), and France that seemingly
sought to polish the UAE’s image while tarnishing that of Qatar. The Brits of
Nepalese origin were acting on behalf, a Norway-based group with alleged links
to the UAE.

The New York Times and The Intercept have reported that the
UAE, the world’s largest spender on lobbying in the United States in 2013, had
engaged a lobbying firm to plant anti-Qatar stories in American media. The
firm, Camstoll Group, is operated by former high-ranking US Treasury officials
who had been responsible for relations with Gulf state and Israel as well as
countering funding of terrorism.

The New York Times reported that Camstoll’s public
disclosure forms “filed as a registered foreign agent, showed a pattern of
conversations with journalists who subsequently wrote articles critical of
Qatar’s role in terrorist fund-raising.”

UAE opposition to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood dates
back at least a decade. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Armed Forces Chief of Staff
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Zayed Al Nahayan warned US diplomats already in
2004 that "we are having a (culture) war with the Muslim Brotherhood in
this country,” according to US diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks.

In 2009. Sheikh Mohamed went as far as telling US officials
that Qatar is "part of the Muslim Brotherhood." He suggested that a review of Al Jazeera
employees would show that 90 percent were affiliated with the Brotherhood. Other UAE officials privately described Qatar
as “public enemy number 3”, after Iran and the Brotherhood.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Qatar, caught in a Catch-22 between a requirement to quickly
reform its labour system in a bid to convince human rights and trade union
activists that it is serious and the need domestically to proceed slowly, risks
losing goodwill it has built in recent years that could further fuel demands to
deprive the Gulf state of its 2022 World Cup hosting rights.

A just published Amnesty International report entitled ‘No
Extra Time: How Qatar Is Still Failing on Workers’ Rights Ahead of the World
Cup’ signals that activists’ patience with Qatar’s failure to act on promises
to reform the living and working conditions of foreign workers, who constitute
a majority of the Gulf states’ population, is running out.

Qatar’s engagement with activists in the last three years in
for the Gulf unprecedented ways and the adoption of significantly improved
living and working standards for foreign labour by two major Qatari
institutions, the Qatar Foundation and the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery
& Legacy, suggested that the Gulf state was serious about reform.

The standards adopted by the foundation and the committee
are however mandatory only for companies contracting with the two institutions.
Qatar could have significantly boosted confidence in its sincerity by
enshrining those standards in national law.

Recent remarks to Qatari media made by Labour and Social
Affairs Minister Abdullah Saleh Mubarak Al Khulaifi suggested that only some of
those standards such as an obligation of employers to pay employees through
bank transfers to ensure that they are paid on time would be included in a new
labour law expected to be adopted before the end of the year.

It wasn’t clear from Mr. Al Khulaifi’s remarks whether the
new law would incorporate promised modifications of Qatar’s kafala or
sponsorship system that put workers at the mercy of their employers. The
changes would fall far short of demands by human rights groups and trade unions
to abolish the system but would constitute an improvement.

Qatar has suggested that it would limit sponsorship for a
period of up to five years rather than the current indefinite period and replace
the exit visa system with a new system that would give employers 72 hours to
appeal against an employee’s intention to leave the country.

Qatar, in response to a stream of reports of work-related injuries
and deaths as well as workers being caught in Catch-22s without papers and
insurance as a result of the sponsorship system, has said that it has increased
by 25 per cent the number of its labour inspectors, shut down more than 30
sub-standard worksites and increased mandatory living space for workers by 50
per cent. While the measures constitute progress, they fall short of full
implementation of promises made and fail to inspire confidence that Qatar has
put the mechanisms in place to efficiently supervise adherence to rules and
regulations.

In an interview with Associated Press Qatari Sports Minister
Salah bin Ghanem bin Nasser al-Ali insisted that the labour issue was “a human
question.” Qataris are not “vicious people who are like vampires. … We have
emotions, we feel bad,” Mr. Al-Ali said. Earlier Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al
Thani said he was personally hurt by the workers’ plight.

While that is no doubt true, Sheikh Tamim also has to reckon
with widespread opposition to radical changes or abolition of the kafala system
among Qataris who worry that they could lose control of their state and society
and see their culture diluted if foreigners were to gain rights. Qataris
constitute a mere 12 per cent of the Gulf state’s population. Many realize that
their demography is unsustainable, but cling to the status quo in the absence
of a solution that would address their existential fears.

Sheikh Tamim’s adoption of more gradual reform of Qatar’s
labour system to take those existential fears into account risks however losing
the benefit of the doubt human rights groups were willing to grant Qatar. With
the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) more hard line in its
approach, Qatar’s failure to convince activists of its sincerity could result
in a renewed push to deprive the Gulf state of its World Cup hosting tights on
grounds of violations of human and labour rights.

A renewed campaign would come at a time that international
sports associations are starting to make adherence to human, labour and gender
rights a pre-condition for the awarding of hosting rights. The International
Olympic Committee (IOC) has begun writing those rights into host city
contracts. The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) warned Iran this week
that it would be stripped of its right to host the 2015 Under-19 men’s
championship if it did not lift its ban on women attending matches in stadia.
Members of the executive committee of world soccer body FIFA have acknowledged
that human rights would have to figure in the future awarding of the World Cup.

In its report, Amnesty noted that Qatar had in May made a
series of promises of reform in response to criticism by human rights activists
that was echoed in a report by law firm DLA Piper commissioned by Qatar. Those
promises included beyond changes in the kafala and exit visa system also the
abolition of a rule that bars workers from returning to Qatar for two years
after they have ended a contract. “Even these limited proposed reforms remain
unfulfilled,” Amnesty said, noting that measures to improve the health and
safety of construction workers had been “inadequate.”

Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Amnesty’s head of refugee and migrant
rights, warned in a statement that “time is running out fast. It has been four
years since Qatar won the bid to host the World Cup, putting itself in the
global spotlight, so far its response to migrant labour abuses has not been
much more than promises of action and draft laws… The government of Qatar still
appears to be dragging its feet over some of the most fundamental changes needed
such as abolishing the exit permit and overhauling its abusive sponsorship
system... Urgent action is needed to ensure we do not end up with a World Cup
tournament that is built on forced labour and exploitation,” Mr. Elsayed-Ali
said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of
Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) has warned
Iran that it would be stripped of its right to host the 2015 Under-19 men’s
world volleyball championship if it bans women from attending matches. The
warning signals a new assertiveness driven by the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) to make adherence to human, gender and labour rights a
condition for potential hosts of major sporting events and raises pressure not
only on Iran but also Saudi Arabia, the two nations that bar women from stadia.

The stakes for Iran and Saudi Arabia are high against a
backdrop of on-and-off debate in both countries about lifting the ban that has
been continuously opposed by religious conservatives.

Growing frustration with
Saudi restrictions on women’s participation in international sporting events
has prompted the IOC to subtly increase pressure on the kingdom. An Iranian and
Saudi refusal could potentially lead to the two countries being barred from
international competitions.

To be clear, Iran unlike Saudi Arabia encourages women’s sports
and fields female athletes in international tournaments provided they are
allowed to wear a headdress that meets both cultural and security and safety
standards. Saudi Arabia by contrast evaded being banned from participation in
the 2012 London Olympics by fielding at the last minute two expatriate Saudi
female athletes, the first time the kingdom officially sent women to an
international tournament.

The kingdom has since stalled on fulfilling its promise to
encourage women’s sports. A meeting in September between IOC President Thomas
Bach, who has instructed his group to write adherence to human, gender and
labour rights into all future Olympic host city contracts, and Saudi Olympic
chief Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz produced little progress on the
issue of women’s sporting rights. Prince Abdullah insisted that the kingdom had
failed to field women at the recent Asian Games because it did not have
qualified athletes.

Mohammed al-Mishal, the secretary-general of Saudi Olympic
Committee, promised however to do so at the 2016 Olympics in Rio Janeiro. Mr.
Al-Mishal said however that women would be limited to sports endorsed by a
literal interpretation of the Qur’an. The Saudi official said the kingdom was
training women to compete in equestrian, fencing, shooting, and archery Olympic
contest which are "accepted culturally and religiously in Saudi
Arabia".

The Saudi reluctance is further evident in the fact that the
kingdom is taking only miniscule steps to encourage women’s sports. The kingdom
has hired consultants to draft its first five-year sports plan that focuses on
men only.

The country’s Shura Council, a consultative assembly, however,
has urged the education ministry to study the possibility of introducing
physical education for girls in public schools. The move could lead to a lifting
of the ban on female sports in public schools. Moreover, authorities last year
began licensing private sports clubs for women.

Women’s gyms are sprouting across the country often linked
to beauty salons or in private apartments. “The government does not issue
licenses for women’s sports clubs. But as long as there are women who want
agile and graceful bodies, such gyms will thrive in the Kingdom,” Fatimah, an
owner of a gym, told Arab News.

Efforts to lift the ban on women attending matches in Saudi
Arabia and Iran have so far stranded on conservative opposition. The FIVB ban
followed the sentencing to a year in prison of a 25-year old dual
Iranian-British national, Goncheh Ghavami, for attempting to enter a World
League volleyball match Teheran’s Azadi Stadium between Iran and Italy. Ms.
Ghavami has since gone on hunger strike. She was convicted of spreading
propaganda against the Iranian government.

A FIVB spokesman said that the federation "will not
give Iran the right to host any future FIVB directly controlled events such as
World Championships, especially under age, until the ban on women attending
volleyball matches is lifted." Iran is scheduled to next year host the
Under-19 men’s world championship. Argentina has been asked to stand-by to
replace Iran as the host of the tournament.

The FIVB made its decision after talks with Human Rights
Watch, which has also held met with Mr. Bach. The meeting with the IOC
president marked a new era in the group’s attitude towards human rights. Mr.
Bach’s predecessor, Jacques Rogge, refused to meet with human rights groups
during his tenure.

In a statement, FIVB president Ary Graca said that "women
throughout the world should be allowed to watch and participate in volleyball
on an equal basis."

Iran’s Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei blocked an attempt in 2006
by then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lift the ban on women attending sports
events. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly toyed in recent years with adapting stadia
to offer separate sections for women, a proposal supported by the Saudi soccer
association. The effort much like similar moves to lift the ban on women
driving in the kingdom have so far been stymied by conservatives.

Saudi Arabia has also refused to sign on to a two-year old declaration
by the majority of Middle Eastern soccer associations grouped in the West Asian Football Federation
to put women’s sporting rights on par with those of men.

The FIVB sanction fuels Iran’s culture wars that are fought
in part in street art. A recent mural on one of Tehran’s main thoroughfares
pictured a woman wearing a national soccer team jersey as she washed dishes at
home. The mural went viral on social media. In the mural, the woman raised a
cup of yellowish dishwash solution as if it were the World Cup trophy in what
was seen as a rejection of conservative notions that a woman’s place is at
home.

At stake in the battle is however far more than just women’s
sports rights. Those rights are part of a larger struggle for Iran’s future as
Iran negotiates with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council an agreement that would resolve the Iranian nuclear problem. Iranian
conservatives fear that a successful negotiation would strengthen the hand of
supporters of reformist president Hassan Rohani in parliamentary elections
scheduled for the spring of 2016.

With popular support for the nuclear talks, conservatives
hope to thwart Mr. Rouhani by appealing to traditional values in their effort
to undercut his efforts to reduce repression and allow for greater freedom of
expression and access to information, promote gender equality, and ease
cultural and educational restrictions. Mr. Rouhani like other members of his
Cabinet regularly posts messages on Facebook and Twitter despite the fact that
access to social media sites is frequently blocked in Iran. The president has
also argued publicly that freedom is a precondition for creativity and has
contradicted conservative efforts to curb fun.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.

Monday, November 10, 2014

With the absence of labour rights in the Gulf under fire as
a result of Qatar’s successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup, Gulf states are
likely to take heart from a recent study that asserts that authoritarian
regimes in the oil-rich Middle East and China have contributed more to the
eradication of global inequality than Western nations.

Human rights and trade union activists, targeting Qatar as
well as the United Arab Emirates, have succeeded in persuading two major Qatari
institutions, the Qatar Foundation and the 2022 Supreme Committee for Delivery
& Legacy, to adopt significantly improved standards for the working and
living conditions of foreign workers, who constitute a majority of the Gulf
state’s population.

The activists’ campaign has also led the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) to adopt adherence to human and labour rights as a
condition in all of its future contracts with host cities. FIFA executive
committee member Theo Zwanziger moreover conceded earlier this year that human
rights would have to figure in future awarding of the World Cup.

The activists have yet to succeed in persuading Qatar to
enshrine the standards adopted by the foundation and the committee into
national law. Qatari Labour and Social Affairs Minister Abdullah Saleh Mubarak
Al Khulaifi told Qatari journalists earlier this week that the Gulf state would
revise its labour law by the end of this year. He suggested that the changes
would primarily involve obliging employers to pay employees through bank
transfers to ensure that they are paid on time.

The legal changes are likely to include only some of the
standards adopted by the two Qatari institutions and fall far short of
activists’ demands that Qatar abolish its kafala or sponsorship system that
puts employees at the mercy of their sponsors by among other things forcing
them to secure their employers’ permission to obtain an exit visa. Activists
have also insisted that Qatar allow the formation of independent trade unions
and endorse collective bargaining, measures that would challenge the Gulf state’s
autocratic rule.

Qatar and other Gulf states who have all begun tinkering
with their labour regimes as a result of the human rights and trade union
pressure on Qatar and the UAE are likely to counter activist pressure by employing
the argument recently put forward by University of Chicago law professor Eric
Posner in a book entitled The Twilight of Human Rights Law and a recent New
Republic article co-authored with law and economics professor Glen Weylthat their sponsorship systems contribute
significantly to the reduction of global inequality.

“Foreign migrant workers earn vastly more in the GCC (Gulf
Cooperation Council) nations (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman and
Kuwait) than they would at home in Bangladesh or India, where they would make
around $1,000 per year. By welcoming migrant workers, the UAE and its neighbour
Qatar do more than any other rich country to reduce global inequality. Through
migration, Qatar’s per-person contribution to the reduction in global
inequality is almost three times that which would be achieved by eliminating
all inequality in the United States, and many times that created by taxes and
transfers in any of the rich countries that belong to the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), according to calculations by one
of us. If you take into account remittances—in UAE, for example, migrant
workers send home more than 75 percent of their salary—the reduction in
inequality is even greater,” Messrs Posner and Weyl argued in New Republic.

“Migration has such large benefits because people in poor
countries start from such a low base. If you give $4,000 to someone who earns
only $1,000, that person’s income increases fivefold, dramatically reducing
inequality. If you give the same amount to a poor person in the United States
making $12,000, the donation would increase his or her income only by a third.
In fact, increasing the income of a truly poor person in a poor country by a
factor of five is precisely what would allow her access to the basic goods,
like education and health that are the empty promises of human rights treaties.
This is why helping the poorest people in the world does so much more to reduce
global inequality than do the welfare states of OECD countries, where money is
shuffled around between the super-rich and (by global standards) the
not-so-poor,” Messrs Posner and Weyl wrote.

The two scholars acknowledge that Qatar and other Gulf
states are autocratic monarchies that boast some of the widest income gaps in
the world but argue that “reducing inequality will require uncomfortable trade-offs.
Qatar would not welcome so many migrant workers if it had to give them generous
political and civil rights...” They further note that the West’s emphasis on
human rights and the role of institutions such as the United Nations Human
Rights Council has failed to pre-empt growing global inequality.

Messrs. Posner and Weyl go a step further by advocating the adoption
of Gulf-style labour systems by Western nations. “If the OECD countries copied
the migration policies of the GCC countries, they would reduce global
inequality by much more than their welfare systems do within their borders,” they
wrote.

Leaving aside the morality of defending violations of human and
labour rights, Messrs. Posner and Weyl appear in arguing in favour of the
kafala system in Qatar and the Gulf to ignore research that counters their
assertions in terms of the economic and social impact of Gulf recruitment on
the lives of individual workers and therefore on efforts to reduce global inequality.
They also overlook the negative impact of the labour system on the development
of host countries like Qatar. Research in recent years has established that:

Unskilled
and semi-skilled workers frequently arrive in Qatar severely indebted because
of fees they are forced to pay to middlemen that include kickbacks to corrupt
agents and executives acting with or without the knowledge of the employer. As
a result a significant portion of a worker’s wages goes to maintenance of a
corrupt system rather than reduction of inequality;

World Bank official Mary Breeding concluded
from research in India that unskilled and low skilled workers are mostly
recruited in rural rather than urban areas in South Asia where wages are often
similar to those in the Gulf. Workers from rural areas with less access to
information are more susceptible to the pitfalls of engaging middlemen who not
only charge illegal fees but often lure them with promises of jobs and income
that differ from what they are obliged to accept once they arrive in Qatar and
other Gulf states;

Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar
researchers concluded that the cost of maintaining the kafala system has not
only cost Qatar significant reputational damage but has also negatively
impacted it’s ranking in the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI). The
researcher said Qatar would rank near the top of the index if adjustments were
made for its large population of migrant workers. With other words, the kafala
system undercuts Qatar’s soft power effort designed to project the Gulf state
as a cutting edge, 21st century knowledge-based society.

If accepted, the assertion would further serve to postpone
the tackling of an unsustainable demographic structure in several Gulf states
including Qatar that involves disenfranchising a majority of the population,
including those who have resided for decades in the country and who’s second
and third generations were born and raised there but have no rights.

It also
lends itself to continued promulgation of autocracy in a region that is
clamouring for change. Finally, it would undermine chances that the 2022 World
Cup would emerge as a badly needed engine of change in a region in which
ensuring regime survival at whatever cost suffocates widespread popular
aspirations.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,
co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and the
author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Lurking in the background of world soccer body FIFA’s talks
with Qatar Airways to replace its Dubai rival Emirates as a sponsor is the
escalating hostility between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as a result of
their divergent attitudes towards political Islam.

Officially, Emirates’ decision to end its $200 million
relationship with FIFA is a result of its announcement three years ago that the
airline is restructuring its sponsorships, which also include soccer clubs Arsenal,
Real Madrid, Paris Saint Germaine (PSG) and Hamburger SV.

The announcement came a year after Emirates emerged as the
most vocal of the soccer body’s sponsors in expressing concern about FIFA’s mushrooming
corruption scandals involving disgraced FIFA executive committee member and
then Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohammed Bin Hammam, a Qatari
national, and question marks about the integrity of the successful Russian and
Qatari bids to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Emirates said at the time that it was “disappointed.”
Emirates was however uncharacteristically silent when in the last year various
sponsors expressed concern about the negative publicity FIFA was generating as
a result of mass protests in Brazil in the run-up to this year’s World Cup and
the soccer body’s unresolved transparency and accountability issues. In a
statement, the airline said it was parting ways with FIFA because the soccer
body’s proposed contract extending the sponsorship arrangement had not met its
expectations.

FIFA’s tarnished image is without doubt a major reason why
Emirates alongside Sony is seeking to disassociate itself from the soccer body.
Yet, it is hard to disassociate state-owned Emirates’ decision from the UAE’s
deteriorating relations with Qatar that has led to the incarceration in the UAE
of Qatari nationals on charges of spying, an environment in which Emiratis are
more reluctant to visit Qatar, and UAE’s investment of millions of dollars in
efforts to undermine its Gulf rival’s image and credibility.

In that environment, Emirates is unlikely to want to have
appeared as a sponsor when Qatar hosts the World Cup in eight years’ time. A
litmus test for what Emirates’ motives are will be whether Emirates also alters
its relationship with PSG, which is owned by Qatar. Emirati officials insist that
their country’s economic and commercial decisions are not effected by political
disputes with partners.

In a statement on its website, Emirates reiterated that “soccer
is a truly global sport and consequently has always been an important strand in
Emirates’ sponsorship portfolio ... Emirates’ sponsorship of FIFA is central to
its soccer strategy, facilitating connection with football fans across the
world.”

The rift between the UAE and Qatar runs deep. The UAE
alongside Saudi Arabia and Bahrain withdrew its ambassador from Doha in March
in a so far failed effort to force Qatar to halt its support for the Muslim
Brotherhood. That failure appears to have prompted the UAE to step up pressure
on Qatar as part of its more activist foreign policy aimed at countering
political Islam

In July, the UAE backed the establishment of the Muslim
Council of Elders (MCE) in a bid to counter Sheikh Qaradawi’s International
Union of Muslim Scholars as well as Qatar’s support for political change in the
Middle East and North Africa as long as it does not include the Gulf. The MCE
promotes a Sunni Muslim tradition of obedience to the ruler rather than
activist elements of the Salafis who propagate a return to 7th century life as
it was at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and his immediate successors.

The UAE, despite publicly backing Qatar against calls that
it be deprived of its right to host the 2022 World Cup because of alleged
wrongdoing in its successful bid and the sub-standard working and living
conditions of foreign workers, has covertly worked against the Gulf state.
Qatar in September briefly detained two British human rights activists who were
investigating human and labour rights in the Gulf state. The detentions exposed
a network of apparently Emirati-backed human rights groups in Norway, including
the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), and France that seemingly
sought to polish the UAE’s image while tarnishing that of Qatar. The Brits of
Nepalese origin were acting on behalf, a Norway-based group with alleged links
to the UAE.

The GNRD’s International Human Rights Rank Indicator (IHRRI)
listed the UAE at number 14 as the Arab country most respectful of human rights
as opposed to Qatar that it ranked at number 94. The ranking contradicts
reports by human rights groups, including the United Nations Human Rights
Council (OHCHR), which earlier this year said it had credible evidence of
torture of political prisoners in the UAE and questioned the independence of
the country’s judiciary. Egypt’s State Information Service reported in December
that GNRD had supported the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist
organization and called for an anti-Brotherhood campaign in Europe.

The New York Times and The Intercept have since revealed
that the UAE, the world’s largest spender on lobbying in the United States in
2013, had engaged a lobbying firm to plant anti-Qatar stories in American
media. The firm, Camstoll Group, is operated by former high-ranking US Treasury
officials who had been responsible for relations with Gulf state and Israel as
well as countering funding of terrorism.

The New York Times reported that Camstoll’s public
disclosure forms “filed as a registered foreign agent, showed a pattern of
conversations with journalists who subsequently wrote articles critical of
Qatar’s role in terrorist fund-raising.” The Intercept asserted that Camstoll
was hired less than a week after it was established in late 2012 by Abu
Dhabi-owned Outlook Energy Investments, LLC with a retainer of $400,000 a
month.

UAE opposition to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood dates
back at least a decade. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Armed Forces Chief of Staff
Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Zayed Al Nahayan warned US diplomats already in
2004 that "we are having a (culture) war with the Muslim Brotherhood in
this country,” according to US diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks.

In 2009. Sheikh Mohamed went as far as telling US officials
that Qatar is "part of the Muslim Brotherhood." He suggested that a review of Al Jazeera employees
would show that 90 percent were affiliated with the Brotherhood. Other UAE officials privately described Qatar
as “public enemy number 3”, after Iran and the Brotherhood.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
as Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute
of Fan Culture of the University of Würzburg and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the
same title.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile